The ANISA model of education (D. Streets and D. Jordan) classifies curriculum content into four areas--the physical environment, the human environment, the unknown environment, and the self--and encourages horizontal integration between content areas. The ANISA model holds that the process of learning consists of differentiation, integration, and generalization. The teacher's role is to help the learner achieve process as well as content goals, thus teaching the child to become a competent learner. While noting that the model is a carefully thought out comprehensive theory, this critical review uses the area of language acquisition to question ANISA assumptions about how humans learn, and discusses another model of learning presented by Joseph Chilton Pearce which maintains that the learner creates an inner model of outer stimuli according to his or her developmental constraints. This inner model is successively refined as the learner gains experience. Pearce's model differs from the ANISA model in that the learner's working theory of "how it all works" provides the categories for classifying incoming data. While the ANISA framework is a model of the linear sequential thinking prevalent in the Western world, the changing paradigms of modern science may be closing the door on scientism, and the capacity of the ANISA model to incorporate these changing paradigms will be the measure of its viability. The Alexander Indian Reserve, near Edmonton, Canada, has based its school philosophy on the ANISA model with dramatic results: attendance has doubled, vandalism has dropped, academic scores have risen, and community involvement has increased from 15 to 500 parents and friends attending home and school nights. (TD)